Bahai students in Iran again excluded from university entrance exam

As the results of this year’s University Entrance examinations in Iran are announced on the web site of the Assessment Department, many Bahai aspirants are finding the error message “incomplete file.” An example is Faraz Rouhani ( فراز روحانی ). HRANA reports that be participated in the University Entrance examination this year, and got as far as the first stage of admission to a study programme, but on September 11, as he was entering his personal data in the site of the Department of Assessments, he was confronted with the error message “file incomplete.” For the past seven years, the “incomplete file” error message has been used to exclude known Bahai students from entering a university. However Ja`far Towfiqi (جعفر توفیقی), who was Minister of Science in President Khatami’s cabinet from 2003 to 2005. and who has been serving as acting Minister of Science, Research and Technology since August 17, 2013, has recently announced a programme of improvements and political opening for the universities. He has said that those excluded from education in recent years and who feel their rights have been infringed should take their cases to the Ministry of Science. President Rouhani has also promised, during the Presidential elections, that the problem of some people being excluded from higher education would be solved. The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, on the other hand, has stated that only Muslims, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians are entitled to higher education.

The author and film maker Muhammad Nourizad ( محمد نوری زاد ), who was once a writer for the hard-line Keyhan newspaper, has written a letter protesting the exclusion of Bahai students using the “incomplete file” ruse. He states that an official from the Ministry of Science had told him that the Ministry of Intelligence had recently caused the exclusion of about 30 eligible Bahai students.